Wide-Area Traveling Wave Fault Location System Based on IEC61850

Existing traveling wave fault location systems employ the double-end method and do not make use of data from neighboring substations. If one of the data acquisition equipments at either end of a line fails to capture the fault transient, no fault location result can be obtained. A wide-area traveling wave fault location (WA-TWFL) system, which makes use of traveling wave data from various substations across the monitored network, is introduced. The WA-TWFL algorithm first identifies the area of the monitored network in which the source of the disturbance originated by analyzing the traveling wave propagation times using the extended double end method. Then, the faulty line, and the distance to fault, are determined using selected records from the identified area of the disturbance. This approach provides fault location reliability than the traditional TWFL algorithm. Traveling wave data models based on IEC61850, which supports open communication and interoperability between data acquisition equipment and the master station of the WA-TWFL, are also presented in this paper. The feasibility of the proposed algorithm is proved using traveling wave data from an actual fault on a power grid in China.